Thomas Alva Edison loved to question(对……有疑问)things. He loved to learn how things worked. He also loved to make things work better. Many people think of him as one of the greatest inventors.

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847. Alva did not do well in school. He always had a lot of questions and liked to explore them. At that time, school was mostly about remembering facts. Alva's mum took him out of school and taught him at home. She taught him to love to read.

Alva sold food and newspapers on trains when he was young. He used the money he earned to buy books and materials for experiments. He set up a lab in1876. Also around this time, Alva lost most of his hearing. He saved a boy from being struck by a runaway train. The child 's father offered to teach Alva how to be a telegraph(电报) operator.

As Alva grew older, he travelled around as a telegraph operator. He continued to be interested in science. Edison wanted to invent things full time.

The telephone was invented in 1876, but it didn't work well. In 1877, Edison and his team invented away to make the telephone work better. Edison also invented a machine that could record words and then play them back.

Edison continued to invent new things. During his life, Edison had l, 093 US patents (专利证书) in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He worked until he was more than eighty years old.

We're now used to wearing masks in public. It's reported that about 300 million masks are used and then thrown away every day in China. Where do these used masks go? You might think that they just go in a dustbin (垃圾箱). But that's just the first stop on them asks' journey.

After the masks are thrown into bins, dust carts empty the bins and take the rubbish to landfills(垃圾场). There the masks will be burned. Burning masks might not seem to be very good for the environment. Won't it cause pollution?

The answer is "no", according to People's Daily. That's because most masks are made of non-woven fabrics , whose main material (材料) is polypropylene, an environmentally-friendly material. It's non-toxic (无毒的)and can break down easily. After burning, it turns into water and carbon dioxide. As long as landfills deal with these emissions (排放物)correctly, burning the masks won't cause pollution.

In fact, burning the masks has some advantages. The process of burning rubbish can create electricity. Burning one ton of rubbish means more than 400kilowatt hours of electricity. It's said that there will be 162, 000 tons of used masks in total in China this year. Burning all of them can create 64 million kilowatt hours of electricity. That is enough to allow an electric car to drive 370 million km.

What's more, the waste from burning masks can be recycled to make bricks or fill roadbeds.

When you think of robots, you might think of something to perform boring tasks, 1engineers today are making robots that can do much more interesting jobs.

Homie Choset at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is a roboticist, a person 2 designs, builds or programmes robots. When Choset was a kid, he was interested in anything that 3—cars, trains, animals. Later, in high school, he built mobile robots similar4small cars. Hoping to continue working 5robots, he studied computer science in college. Some robots can move only forward, backward, left and right,  but snakes can wist (绕，卷)in many 6"Snakes are far more interesting than the cars, "Choset said.

After he started working at Carnegie Mellon, Choset and his colleagues there began developing7own snake robots. A typical snake robot is made up of a lot of metal containers linked together, each with a motor and electronic parts 8Choset's team programmed robots to perform the same movements as real snakes. The robots also move in ways that snakes9don't, such as rolling. Choset's snake robots could crawl (爬) 10 the grass, swim in a pond and even climb a flagpole.

"Snake robots go11 we can't, "says Choset. Snake robots could one day search for victims after an earthquake. And Choset's snake robots might be12 for heart surgeries(外科手术)as well. Choset is thinking of sending robots into Egyptian archaeological (考古学的)sites that are too small or13for people to enter. A robot 14a camera could show scientists what is inside.

Even after 15 years of working with his team, ""I still don't get 15 with watching the motion of my robots, "Choset says.

Tony's class will be on a visit to the museum next week. He'd like to take some photos and put them upon the school (网站), so he wants to borrow the (照相机) from his father. His father says that they waited for weeks to hear from their pen friends (在国外) when he was at school. But Tony can send and receive photos and (邮件) on the Internet nowadays. Tony thinks the Internet and computer have changed their lives. They even use online (教科书) in their classes. His father says in the past, they (主要地) got information from paper books. Some books were huge ones with thousands of (页). But with the invention of the computer and (电子的) technology, it's easy to get information on the Internet. So they think the Internet is more (有影响力的) than books.

His father (借给)him the camera. Because it is a gift from his mother, his father asks him to promise that he will look after it.

电脑的发明改变了我们的生活。而网络的发展使得网上购物越来越受到人们的喜爱。上周你校学生就网购的好处和弊端这一话题展开了讨论。请根据下表信息写一篇80词左右的英语短文。

How Life Changes

Great changes have taken place in our life for years. Let's have a look at these examples.

In the past, people read newspapers, listened to the radio and watched TV news and other information. People kept in touch with each other mainly writing letters or sending postcards. They would buy everything in the shop or market. Big families had to share small houses were old and dirty. Children used to go to school by bike.

But now people can get information on the mobile phone or computer almost any place and at any time. They can buy things online at home. What's more, people can others by email, WeChat or QQ, with which they can send and  messages whenever they like. More and more people live in and clean apartments with several rooms. More families are rich enough to send their children to school  their own cars.

In a word, thanks to the social progress, people live better than before. Let's cherish what we have today.

The umbrella is a very common object. It (keep) the rain and the sun off the user. Most umbrellas can be folded up (折叠) so it is easy to carry (they).

The umbrella is ancient invention. It (invent) about 4,000 years ago. At that time, an umbrella was used (protect) the user from the sun's rays (光线), The Chinese were the (one) to use umbrellas for protection from the rain.

People Europe used umbrellas to protect themselves from the rain by the 16th century, only women used them. This changed Jonas Hanway, a writer, started carrying one in public. He popularised umbrellas for (man). Today everybody uses umbrellas.

Texting while driving is against the law in 47 states. But what about texting while walking? A 2018 study reported that more than 2, 500 people in the US ended up in hospitals resulting from using a mobile device (设备) while walking.

Hawaii passed a law making it illegal(违法的) to text or look down at a mobile device while crossing the street. It is the first state with a law like this. Do people think more places should accept such a law? The LA Times did a survey. Here are some replies they received.